The NFL will have a slew of adjustments to make in its effort to commence play for the 2020 season. All sports are operating without fans in the stands as a recommended precaution for stave off the novel coronavirus, making the broadcast product all the more important.
Longtime NFL coach John Madden had a suggestion as to what the league could implement to make this fan-less experience more engaging. Instead of using artificial sounds to simulate the roaring fans, use actual sounds from the field:
“He said, ‘When I first left the coaching profession and went to broadcasting, there was something about it that I just felt was missing and I couldn’t really put my finger on it,'” Sunday Night Football executive producer Fred Gaudelli told Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic of a conversation he had with the NFL Hall of Famer. “He said, ‘Then I realized that I wasn’t hearing the sound that I had grown accustomed to hearing — as a player and as a coach. I never coached from the box, I coached from the field.’ He said to me, ‘Fred, you’re going to hear things that even you have never heard, so I’d be really trying to figure out how to best capture those sounds, and present them to the audience and not worry as much about artificial sound.'”
While Madden's idea could bring excitement for those that missed the hard-hitting action of the NFL, it could also bring harrowing and downright horrifying sounds in a few collisions.
Gaudelli might just have to figure out where to draw the line to make his product shine despite of the cards that have been dealt.
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